Check it Out: There’s two ways to enter Canada
BY Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com
A prisoner said to his cell mate, “I prefer to think of it as a gated community.”
There are two kinds of migrants to Canada - legal and illegal, however the government prefers to call the latter “irregular migrants”. Those crossing illegally are defined by the government as those who enter Canada between official ports of entry. One of those ports of entry is located at Emerson, Manitoba, a community of 700 citizens.
Between January and April of 2017, 423 illegal migrants entered at that border. One of the migrants was allowed in Canada after he had a series of criminal offences in the US, which made him ineligible for citizenship there. He had multiple criminal convictions and a deportation order. He was detained at the Emerson point of entry, got violent, vandalized his cell, and assaulted a border guard.
Canadian Border Services Agency documents say “not all persons with criminality are detained”, and also say “it has no way to track what happens with criminals who try to cross the border”.
According to Wikipedia “From January 2017 to March 2018, the RCMP intercepted 26,645 people crossing the border into Canada illegally. Public Safety Canada estimated that another 2,500 came across in April, 2018 for a total of just over 28,000, of which 1,000 had been removed from Canada.
In mid-March, 2020 at a press conference, Canadian Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair said those crossing the border irregularly will still be allowed into Canada, but will be subject to medical screening and housed in quarantine when necessary. Between October and Dec., 2019 the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) said there was an intake of 4,097 refugee claims from those crossing irregularly.
Border agents will turn away people with a drug charge from decades ago, yet Peter MacKay observed, “Instead of turning people (irregular migrants) away, we’re letting them in and paying for their health care and quarantine.”
But what about migrants who enter Canada legally? Recently I spoke to a young family from South Africa who came to Canada. The young mom described her homeland as beautiful, but also said “It’s no longer safe. You can have your house broken into in the middle of the day. It became impossible to get a job if you can’t prove you’re 70 percent of colour, and you can’t say anything about it, or they call you a racist. You don’t get many opportunities to leave the country, so when you do, you take it.”
The parents waited a long time for that opportunity, and ensured their children learned English as a second language in preparation. Finally they got an opportunity when an agent arranged a job interview for the young father of two. It was a huge sacrifice for the couple to sell everything they owned in order to pay the agent, and move to a free and safe country.
“We’re coming to this country to stay,” the young mom said, adding that they want to become active citizens of their new community. They found (and paid for) a place to rent and did their two weeks of quarantine before they started working.
There’s two ways to come to Canada. Which do you condone?
You can contact me at joanjanzen@yahoo.com